Fort York Visitor Centre now open: evocative, startling architecture

Eric Morse –

On Sept. 19, the completed Fort York Visitor Centre, designed by Patkau Architects of  Vancouver and Kearns Mancini Architects of Toronto, was proudly opened by the Hon. David Onley in his last official act as Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, along with Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly.  A number of other dignitaries and members of the public were in attendance.

As envisaged, the design is low and linear, positioned on Fort York Blvd. just three meters north of the Gardiner Expressway, which it uses to startling effect as its front lawn and portico. It is built to the level of the original glacis (cleared firing area, now called the Common) of the fort, and its weathered iron frontage mimics the original Lake Ontario shoreline bluffs, where American troops landed in 1813 to burn the town. (It is also startlingly and abstractly evocative of a World War Two anti-tank defence on a beachhead that might be Normandy or Dieppe.)

As explained by principal architects Jonathan Kearns and John Patkau, the centre is meant to act as an interpretive hub for the historic and archaeological sites of the entire area, and will also be the new home of the fort’s administrative offices, freeing the historic buildings inside the rampart for use as museum space. It contains a series of exhibition rooms and galleries gradually sloping upward to emerge at ground level on the Common. One of the rooms, the Vault, is designated safe storage for especially valuable items, currently including a World War I Vickers machine gun. Another gallery is entirely furnished with 1812-themed works by Canadian painter Charlie Pachter, donated by the artist.

Five exhibitions also opened inside the Visitor Centre, four of them focussing on the First World War.

For further information on the site and on Fort York, visit www.toronto.ca/fortyork